Handbook of Mathematical, Scientific, and Engineering Formulas, Tables, Functions, Graphs, Transforms

No decent scientific library should be missing this book. An excellent desk reference.

Very broad reference text for engineering and general science; for the price, it's much larger than I had expected, and contains valuable material I have not seen anywhere else

It has 1011 pages, not including index, and it runs all the way from algebra (special products, partial fractions, matrices), to elementary analysis, geometry, trig, logarithms, hyperbolics, series, derivatives, integrals, differential equations, special functions, and more than 300 pages dedicated to applied science data: physiscs, chemistry, biology. One of the things I really liked about this book is that it has a table with all the prime numbers from 1 to 100,000. All you have to do is look for the suspect! You forgot an obscure solid volume formula? It's here. Dealing with differential equations? They are listed here by kind (Exact, Bernoulli's, Reducible, etc), faced with their method of solution. I am not an engineering major, but this was too much of a temptation. Not everything is here, of course: your brain is still where you left it, but this handbook is a very good ally.

This is one of the best reference books in my library. It's a thick one, but I can't imagine any project without taking "Big Red" with me. All those formulas and relations one usually ends up rummaging through old college texts for and a handy springboard for functions one may not have encountered before. For college students this book is a MUST. Especially in those upper division courses (can you say "fourier transform"? ). Definitely worth the investment.